[Industrialblog,
May 31, 2005]
Defending AA
My friend Dean has a few issues when it comes to AA.
There's this:
Ouch. Plus:
And this:
Dean, Dean, Dean, buddy. Love ya. Really.
This leaves me in the awkward position of defending AA. Why is it awkward? Because I don't go to AA, but I got sober in AA. Without AA, IB Bill would have wrung up so many DUIs by now my license would be suspended forever and I would probably be chronically unemployed and living in my mother's house as a pathetic loser in Florida. Not only don't I drink, but I really don't think about it. I don't get that cringing sensation in the gut when other people talk about drinking. On occasions around alcohol I might mention that it would be nice to be able to drink. But I won't. I choose not to drink. And then the thought is gone and that's that. I enjoy myself and even forget entirely that other people are drinking.
What AA did, and the reason I defend it to this day, is help me stick with that decision not to drink. I went to 18 months of AA meetings, almost every day, and did "the program" pretty thoroughly. I stopped going to meetings about 16 years ago. I am one of the few recovering alcoholics to join the U.S. Peace Corps (there's lots who join both groups, just in the opposite order, Peace Corps, then AA :) ) I lived in a house filled with people in recovery for years, helping others get sober.
Here's the bottom line: AA works. Don't be afraid to join, don't be afraid to work the program. It works. If you work the program and don't fight it, it's a guaranteed way to get sober. You do the program, you "surrender to the process," and you'll get sober. I've never seen it fail because God doesn't fail. Not will you get sober, but the desire to drink will go away; in some cases, such as mine, God will pour out His grace so much that you literally die to alcohol. And after that happens, you can live your new life without alcohol and without missing it.
So AA is not bullshit. The exact opposite. It's a beautiful thing and one in which millions of people have found their lives restored. I've sat in rooms with men in their 60s, sharing how they abused their wives and ruined their relationships with their children, and talk about the beauty of knowing that their grandchildren had never seen them drunk and love them, and how their children, still wary, have begun to show them respect. I've seen women talk about how they lost custody of their children because of alcohol and drugs, yet they're piecing their lives together. I've seen relationships restored, love found, and hope renewed as people get sober.
But be forewarned — working the AA program for real is extremely strong medicine, equivalent to taking half a fatal dose of medicine, and it's not for the faint-hearted. You need big, brass balls / ovaries to work AA completely because you'll one day have to peer directly into your own soul without the comfort of a single rationalization or hiding place — and you're not going to like what you see there. And afterward, even if you get better, you won't be like those people who go through their lives without ever looking directly into their soul. It's the closest thing to the Total Perspective Vortex or whatever it was called in Hitchhiker's Guide. You'll know God, and you'll know yourself, and before you get that grace you'll know exactly where you stand.
Now, if it's so great, why don't I go? For one thing, and this sounds selfish — I don't need many meetings anymore. I took the medicine and now I maintain myself with my Christian faith. AA is a spiritual program, and I continue my spiritual life in other ways. Still, a few meetings a year help. Now what about helping others? Yes, I know. I keep meaning to join up again to serve others. It's on my list :)
But there's another reason I don't go to AA much: Dean has a point. Some AAers can indulge in extended, insufferable pious moralizing. Some meetings are cultish. Sometimes crazy people take over certain meetings. There are a ton of young people who have nothing more wrong with them than their parents didn't bother to raise them or teach them any values, and they have been shoveled into AA by a combination of parental neglect, schools that don't have a clue, and the recovery industry. And then there are people who swear AA is the only way to get sober and if you don't get sober, you're DOOOOOMMMMEEEDD! Other people judge your sobriety, saying if you don't go to AA you'll never be happy.
To sum up: If you want to get sober and want a guaranteed way, then go to AA. Do the first five steps without any reservation. Only do those five steps in the first year. Choose your sponsor carefully — it should be someone you want to be like, and that's not necessarily someone who volunteers for the job. Don't make any big changes in the first year. Stick with the winners and the mature people and steer clear of the nuts. Even in early sobriety you should know the difference. Stay out of relationships unless you're already in one. Then after a year of sobriety, find a good therapist — not someone who will take your insurance and tell you to go to meetings, but someone who will focus on helping you develop life skills. Go and find God for real, not a nebulous higher power you get to create in your own image. God is a jealous God and you don't get to tell Him what He's like; He'll tell you.
And then when you're done, you'll be sober and know some peace ... but most people won't know what the heck you're talking about most of the time :) Many people will actually condescend toward you! But others will understand, and then you'll have found a kindred spirit.
FWIW. YMMV.
There's this:
Powerless? Bite my crank. I am not powerless. I've just gotten too self-indulgent. Don't tell me I'm powerless, because I'm not. The truth is, I've become a self-indulgent, self-obsessed jerk and I need to get this s*** under control.
Ouch. Plus:
I like the sauce too f***ing much. That's been the problem all along. 12-step programs may help some people, but honestly: they are bulls***. They really are.
And this:
This weekend, I went up to my sister-in-law's house to celebrate Memorial Day. At that get-together, lots of people had booze. Beer and wine were everywhere. When I went there, I made a conscious choice: I could drink booze, but I wouldn't. Because if I had indulged that urge, I would have been a smarmy, self-indulgent ass. So even though several opportunities to drink presented themselves, I consciously chose to say, "Nah, I'd better not. I'll just be a jerk if I do, and while I might enjoy myself then, I won't enjoy thinking about it later."
Dean, Dean, Dean, buddy. Love ya. Really.
This leaves me in the awkward position of defending AA. Why is it awkward? Because I don't go to AA, but I got sober in AA. Without AA, IB Bill would have wrung up so many DUIs by now my license would be suspended forever and I would probably be chronically unemployed and living in my mother's house as a pathetic loser in Florida. Not only don't I drink, but I really don't think about it. I don't get that cringing sensation in the gut when other people talk about drinking. On occasions around alcohol I might mention that it would be nice to be able to drink. But I won't. I choose not to drink. And then the thought is gone and that's that. I enjoy myself and even forget entirely that other people are drinking.
What AA did, and the reason I defend it to this day, is help me stick with that decision not to drink. I went to 18 months of AA meetings, almost every day, and did "the program" pretty thoroughly. I stopped going to meetings about 16 years ago. I am one of the few recovering alcoholics to join the U.S. Peace Corps (there's lots who join both groups, just in the opposite order, Peace Corps, then AA :) ) I lived in a house filled with people in recovery for years, helping others get sober.
Here's the bottom line: AA works. Don't be afraid to join, don't be afraid to work the program. It works. If you work the program and don't fight it, it's a guaranteed way to get sober. You do the program, you "surrender to the process," and you'll get sober. I've never seen it fail because God doesn't fail. Not will you get sober, but the desire to drink will go away; in some cases, such as mine, God will pour out His grace so much that you literally die to alcohol. And after that happens, you can live your new life without alcohol and without missing it.
So AA is not bullshit. The exact opposite. It's a beautiful thing and one in which millions of people have found their lives restored. I've sat in rooms with men in their 60s, sharing how they abused their wives and ruined their relationships with their children, and talk about the beauty of knowing that their grandchildren had never seen them drunk and love them, and how their children, still wary, have begun to show them respect. I've seen women talk about how they lost custody of their children because of alcohol and drugs, yet they're piecing their lives together. I've seen relationships restored, love found, and hope renewed as people get sober.
But be forewarned — working the AA program for real is extremely strong medicine, equivalent to taking half a fatal dose of medicine, and it's not for the faint-hearted. You need big, brass balls / ovaries to work AA completely because you'll one day have to peer directly into your own soul without the comfort of a single rationalization or hiding place — and you're not going to like what you see there. And afterward, even if you get better, you won't be like those people who go through their lives without ever looking directly into their soul. It's the closest thing to the Total Perspective Vortex or whatever it was called in Hitchhiker's Guide. You'll know God, and you'll know yourself, and before you get that grace you'll know exactly where you stand.
Now, if it's so great, why don't I go? For one thing, and this sounds selfish — I don't need many meetings anymore. I took the medicine and now I maintain myself with my Christian faith. AA is a spiritual program, and I continue my spiritual life in other ways. Still, a few meetings a year help. Now what about helping others? Yes, I know. I keep meaning to join up again to serve others. It's on my list :)
But there's another reason I don't go to AA much: Dean has a point. Some AAers can indulge in extended, insufferable pious moralizing. Some meetings are cultish. Sometimes crazy people take over certain meetings. There are a ton of young people who have nothing more wrong with them than their parents didn't bother to raise them or teach them any values, and they have been shoveled into AA by a combination of parental neglect, schools that don't have a clue, and the recovery industry. And then there are people who swear AA is the only way to get sober and if you don't get sober, you're DOOOOOMMMMEEEDD! Other people judge your sobriety, saying if you don't go to AA you'll never be happy.
To sum up: If you want to get sober and want a guaranteed way, then go to AA. Do the first five steps without any reservation. Only do those five steps in the first year. Choose your sponsor carefully — it should be someone you want to be like, and that's not necessarily someone who volunteers for the job. Don't make any big changes in the first year. Stick with the winners and the mature people and steer clear of the nuts. Even in early sobriety you should know the difference. Stay out of relationships unless you're already in one. Then after a year of sobriety, find a good therapist — not someone who will take your insurance and tell you to go to meetings, but someone who will focus on helping you develop life skills. Go and find God for real, not a nebulous higher power you get to create in your own image. God is a jealous God and you don't get to tell Him what He's like; He'll tell you.
And then when you're done, you'll be sober and know some peace ... but most people won't know what the heck you're talking about most of the time :) Many people will actually condescend toward you! But others will understand, and then you'll have found a kindred spirit.
FWIW. YMMV.
I mean, quite evidently AA is for some people.
My own story is, I'm not an alcoholic, but from age 18 up through age 35, nobody who knew me well ever mistook me for a light drinker. I drank because I liked it, and quite frankly I drank because it altered my consciousness. Alcohol is a drug, and alcohol is legal: that's the way I looked at it. I drank at some times more heavily and at some times less heavily; but I was well acquainted with the practice of downing a sixpack of beer along with supper.
Then in December 1991, at age 35, I finished my Ph.D. And all of a sudden my drinking shut off, like a light switch. Over the following year, I doubt I drank half a dozen beers sum total. For a couple of years after that, I returned to drinking, and sometimes downing the old sixpack, though at nowhere like my previous pace. Then, in June of 1995, I entered into four hellish years of unemployment and underemployment, which included running away across the continent to Seattle for six weeks the summer I turned 40; and my drinking dropped all by itself... this time not to virtually nothing, but to a moderate level, where it has maintained itself these past ten years with no obvious effort on my part.
These days I'll have an occasional beer or three, I'll go weeks without drinking, and it just doesn't seem like a big deal to me any more. The last time I was drunk was just about ten years ago this week.
I still don't have a great deal of insight into what happened to change my drinking habits. It seemed to have something to do with making a major transition in life, which I've noticed has also brought about other fairly radical transformations in my life. Was God at work in me? Yes, no doubt; but not in a way into which I have any great level of conscious insight.
I can count two major transformative experiences in my adult life when I was sharply aware of God being at work in me. One was in my early twenties, when over a span of two years I virtually demolished a close friend emotionally: I swore I would never again treat another human being that way, and my personality underwent a major and lasting shift. The other was in the aftermath of my infamous "Escape to Seattle" at age 40, when I experienced what I call my "latter turning," and again underwent a deep-reaching and lasting transformation.
Note, the first of these two transformations took place in the midst of those years when I was drinking heavily. And the second took place after I had already left my heavy drinking behind me, and neither at the beginning nor at the end of those four years of hell, but rather in the middle of those four years.
So there you have it. Life is a tangled ball of yarn, and I haven't a clue (no pun intended ;) how to unravel it on this point. I know some pastors who are well versed in the literature and technicalities of alcoholism and recovery; as for me, the older I get, the less I find myself drawn to "methods" and "techniques," and the more I find myself drawn simply to theology, liturgy, the traditions of the Church, and a personal relationship with God in Jesus Christ.
In terms of the munus triplex (Christ as prophet, priest, and king), I think most of us are called to our imitation of Christ primarily in terms of one of those three offices. (In all the rest of the Bible, only Samuel came close to filling all three of those offices; Saul attempted it, but that was part of his downfall.) In my case I find myself primarily a priest, and much less a prophet or a king; which is strange, because my personality is not at all the sort one would ordinarily associate with a "priestly" type. Though I can see how this connection arose in my life, and it grew out of those transformations, especially my "latter turning" around age 40.
Though how was it connected with the history of my drinking? I'll be honest with you, Bill, I haven't a clue. Like I say, life is a tangled ball of yarn. And here I am, eating up bandwidth on your blog... :)
First, I don't think AA works for everyone and for those it doesn't work for, I think it would be wrong to say it was their fault. AA clearly works very well for some people, but it isn't for everyone.
Second, I think some people do beat addictions by reaching a point where they have the strength to opt out, the object of the addiction no longer holds interest to them, or the cost (physical or otherwise) is simply too high. That is, they are simply able to solve their own problem.
I'm not sure addiction is or is not a disease, nor am I sure what the relevance of that is. One core to both approaches above is that at some point one apparently reaches a belief that an addiction can be beat (either via personal self control or self control granted through some higher power).
Since I live in "gray world," I can see that there is probably a need for a lot of different approaches to beating an addiction.
Finally, I believe beating an addiction is a hard road for most (if not all).
My own experience was that I had to achieve a degree of incomprehensable demoralization that convinced me I was truly powerless over alchohol and my life was unmanagable. At that point it was finally possible to turn over the controls to a higher power. From there on it was easy. I've got 11 years now and don't go to a lot of meetings, but my wife is very active and I absorb a lot through osmosis.
Personally, I've met very few people who licked alcohol on their own, and I've no desire to risk what I've got with any experimentation. Aloha, Hunt
Is it for everyone? I couldn't possibly answer that question, but I can say that it's helped a whole lot of people make their own lives better.
From his site, I have stumbled on to Bills.
Now first and foremost I think I am a bit uneducated so my input may not be welcome. Yet, something in these AA comments compelled me to reply.
Alot of what you guys said here reminded me of diet groups silly as it sounds.
Oh, Bill, I hope you don't mind but a g/f of mine has also started to read your blogs. She is a psychologist and has some interesting takes on the workings of the mind. LOL!!! I can't wait to see what she writes to you. It shall certainly be interesting. :)